Cooking is easy. Cut two potatoes into eighths, fry in lots of olive oil until they’re gold-brown, add lemon and pepper seasoning. And have some crackle-sausage and a frozen Frappuccino as well. Cooking is easy!

Beginning in 1977, hydrogen-core band Korea Slim, composed of immortal Texarkanian refugee Cheon Eun-Kyung and a rotating core of session musicians, began releasing centennial compilations entitled “Our 13 Greatest Explosions,” featuring new and old hits in 3D. The first and second editions were well-received, and Eun-Kyung became a minor deity world-wide.

However, the release of the 2177 edition of “Our 13 Greatest Explosions” caused mass protests across Asia-Sud, with the main complaint being that the band members of Korea Slim did not pay proper homage to their hydrogen-core forebears, Laotian sound collective haxaFUEGO. Eun-Kyung’s statues were torn down across the region, and she canceled all of Korea Slim’s Vietnamese concert dates out of concern that their new level of bass might cause the country to sink beneath the waves. haxaFUEGO, having been a conceptual art project that never released any music or even existed in the first place, did not comment. Korea Slim’s immortality defused the controversy, when everyone who cared died.

By the time the 2277 edition of “Our 13 Greatest Explosions” was ready for distribution, Korea Slim had lost none of their status, and a planet was named after them in the Fardeep Colonies. However, Eun-Kyung was hesitant to emigrate, noting that if she left Earth, she would renounce her family’s claim to the leadership of the Bob Directorate. Desperate for a ticket off the Pale Blue Dot, her session musicians banded together and, after a late-night rehearsal at the Sagrada Familia, descended upon Eun-Kyung with knives and clubs. Later testimony suggests that she was stabbed over 700 times. However, in the melee, her body disappeared, and no record of it has surfaced since. All Korea Slim servers and repositories went down immediately, and the band has not been heard from since.

As the presumptive release date of the fifth collection of Explosions approaches, the worlds wait with bated breath; will 2377 O.Y. bring a new Korea Slim CD, or will the labyrinthine halls beneath Neo-Daejeon remain dark? Watch the countdown to the new year live on Empire Broadcast Net.

I will tell you two stories of El Generalissimo Ernesto R. “Mad Dog” Saumarez, Uniter of the Americas and Guardian of the Red Shield.

Antarctica was originally connected to South America by a wide land bridge, which was used by Perjtak, King of the Southern Seals, as a smuggling route. Perjtak’s influence began to spread northwards, and El Heneral Saumarez (who was, at that time, merely Guardian of The Chiles and The Tamer of Brazilia) took note. He knew he could not mount an attack on Perjtak’s citadel at the South Pole, as there was not a man in Saumarez’s army who was his equal, and temperatures at that time regularly reached Absolute Zero. “The world, she betrays me!” Saumarez thought to himself.

The situation grew more and more annoying. “The world betrays me,” said Saumarez, “but I may shape the world!” He walked south, towering over the mountains, crashing through the fields, and came to a place where the world began to grow more ugly, more… Antarctic-ey. “This is where the world ends,” Saumarez declared. He pulled out his Police Special and shot the ground, once. That hole began to erode more and more, and the waves crashed in as the ground subsided. Within a week, there was a fiendish ocean where the land bridge once was, and Perjtak was cut off from civilization. The end of the Southern Americas is now called “Tierra del Fuego,” in tribute to the power of Saumarez.

Things were peaceful. Then, two years later, while on patrol, Saumarez spied a Septapus cruising at 12,000 feet. He engaged it, and the Septapus banked to attack. Septapus attacks are heavily traditionalized, as noted by P. Q. Rellbudine OBE in his book “Dogfighting Practices of the Tentacled Ones.” They will make head-on approaches to maximize closing speed, then—just as their adversary passes them—they will vent their forward gas bladders to equalize speed and expel their deadly aft ink. The ideal human defense is “THE KRUGER TWIST,” where one engages the tentaculo in its preferred head-on position, but flies inverted. As the pass occurs and the tentaculo vents its gas bladders, one makes an inverted loop. This puts the fast part of a loop first (as opposed to a non-inverted loop), and the slow, climbing portion brings one’s guns to bear on the octopus as it reorients to confirm its kill.

El Heneral knew this. He flew straight at the Septapus, .50-caliber machine guns blazing, but steered right at the Septapus’s oncoming purple dome. He ejected as the two were five feet away going a combined 2400 KM/h, and floated down to Saumarez-Sud Airbase, where his martini awaited him. “El Heneral, why did you not just perform THE KRUGER TWIST, and make another pass?” his crew chief and tertiary beatbox asked. “Wladimir. Cowards make two passes. I make one pass. I am Saumarez,” Saumarez said, and took a nap.

– Force-fed Warren Harding live ferrets and wombats until Harding exploded in a shower of nickels and quarters.
– Kidnapped novelist Virginia Woolf using a time-exposure suit designed by novelist Emily Brontë.

– Built the world’s first intra-thoracic model railway whilst moonlighting as an intensive care surgeon.
– Fired by the Oregon-Northwest Steam-Rail Company for using the telegraph to repeatedly broadcast “WENIS (STOP) OR WENUS??(STOP)” for over 36 consecutive hours.

– Sponsored an expedition to the lost city of Whanoctlatolepec after reading about it in a copy of “Boys’ Own Adventures.”
– Failed to secure a Papal pardon, despite all efforts.

– Produced in a factory that processes peanuts.
– Performed eye surgery only once, on Raul Castro.

– Dabbled in international finance, but was fired due to anti-cloneism.
– Is legally prohibited from unfolding in time and the Z-axis.
– Arrested for wantonly disseminating information on and relating to the proper maintenance of a vagina without the proper authorization or knowledge.
A valued member of this organization, perhaps?